In Kentucky, Toyota Faces Union Rumblings

York was put on lighter duty because of her injuries as a way to keep her on the payroll with full benefits, Toyota officials said. But for York, the job is as hard as any other in the plant. She also makes 20 percent less money and works an overnight shift that finishes at 2 a.m. She isn't satisfied with her new work arrangement and she's getting fed up with Toyota.

"I have a crappy job. I'm on second shift. I'm in pain," she said.

York says she is considering signing a union card for the first time in 19 years at Toyota. "It might just bring a new set of problems, but something has to be done," she said. "We need help."

When it built the Georgetown plant 20 years ago, Toyota was "a middle-of-the-pack auto manufacturer, somewhere below Chrysler," McKenna said.

Today Toyota is the highflying auto giant that recently surpassed General Motors as the world's largest automaker. "There are a lot of good, hardworking Kentucky people responsible for that success," McKenna said.

Toyota selected the Georgetown site during a wave of Japanese factory-building in the 1980s that was meant to counter criticism from Detroit and in Washington of rising imports. Georgetown is Toyota's highest-volume factory outside Japan. It serves as a template for the other plants the company is building around the country, including a new $1.3 billion factory in Tupelo, Miss., that is scheduled to open in three years.

About 7,200 people work at the Georgetown plant where the Camry, Solara and Avalon cars are made almost from scratch. Georgetown builds all its own engines. A plastics shop makes bumpers and instrument panels. The air is clogged with layers of industrial noise and music -- from stamping presses pounding out doors and hoods from rolls of steel, robots welding the different parts together and radios blaring country, jazz and soul music.

Since the second half of the 20th century, auto jobs have been among the highest-paid in all of manufacturing. Steel wages and construction wages followed them. In rural towns, high wages put pressure on other local employers to pay more.

"Instead of leading with $25 or $27, you have them paying $12," said Ross E. Eisenbrey, vice president and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "That whole effect is wiped out. For the larger economy, it's downward pressure on wages. There won't be a lift that auto wages were providing in the past."

The dissidents at Toyota hold their Wednesday meetings in the Best Western's Avalon room -- named after the car built at the plant. Some wear shirts emblazoned with a UAW-Toyota logo.

They say Toyota's hard-line positions prompted workers to seek help from the UAW. "We don't know how to organize," said Kenny Harper, who has worked at Toyota for 18 years. "We need professional assistance."

On April 28, the workers' group and union organizers celebrated Worker Memorial Day with a service at a Georgetown park. They placed 2,000 small white paper bags with candles along a walkway surrounding a large pond. The bags represented the number of workers the union group says have been pushed out of Toyota jobs because of injuries over the past five years. They sang "Amazing Grace," read from the Bible and symbolically acknowledged some of the major injuries that affect manufacturing workers: tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, connective tissue disorder, wrist pain, lower back pain, sprains and strains.

Aileen Waugh, 51, said she had been on work restrictions for seven weeks because of torn cartilage in her wrist. She hopes the hand will heal, making surgery unnecessary.

"I think we are past due for everybody to see the other side," Waugh said. "It's not just about building great cars."